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Hello,

It sure is duplicate content.  By putting "/article.cfm" into the robot.txt won't work because if you do that you are just re-directing the whole folder.  You need to do a permanent re-direct.  I had a brief look at the site and it seems like there are over 1000+ pages.  This might take a while but it is neccessary to do it, if not your clients rankings will not perform and most likely penalised.  A simple way would be doing a canonical link in /article.cfm?intDocID=22572 so you are showing google the main article is located at /bc-blazes-construction-trail.

However, the best way would be doing a 301 permanent re-direct of course.  I'm sure you could get a web dev to write a script to automatically run through the database and output the re-directs than manually re-directing 1000+ pages.  If it can't be done, you could outsource it on freelancer.com for around $2-300.

Thanks

Hello,

In general, I believe it won't.  Why? because since your website is the main source, the other affiliates are all linking to that particular product page.  As such, even if these affiliates are scrapping your descriptions, they are all still linking back to that page.  This would suggest to Google, you are the main source, thus you shouldn't get penalised.

Also, even if you change the description, new affiliates would still scrap the content.  However, I think once in a while provided if you have the resources, you should refresh your descriptions to keep the content fresh.

Hope this helps.

Hello,

Do you mean

1. This Is The Title

or

2. THIS IS THE TITLE

Firstly, I don't believe Google would penalisise the site, if you decide to use 'THIS IS THE TITLE' but capitalising everything is hard to read, somewhat unprofessional and possibly SPAMMY.  A good article to read would be: http://uxmovement.com/content/all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read/.  Although there is no direct effect, having capitals could decrease the CTR, so if you were ranked in position 3, and your CTR (lower) or bounce rate (higher) than normal, it could be signal your websites content is not up to scratch, thus your rankings could be effected in that regard.

As such I would not recommend your client in using CAPS for the whole meta title as it will penalise the site more than actually helping it.

5% CTR is good but 2 cents per click is really low.  Other than being in Brazil, I believed you have been 'smart priced' due to the traffic quality you are sending through.  Also, when you started using adsense, I assume the CPC was higher right?

Hello,

I would like to ask what is your CTR like?  Since your website is targets the younger audience, it is unlikely you would receive a high CPC, say above 60-70 cents per click.

What I would suggest is to only use 2 adsense units a page.  This should increase the CPC, because less ads are been displayed(as usually the higher paying CPC's or higher quality ads)

I would suggest using only 300x250, 120/160x 600, 468x68 or 728x90 because these tend to be the best paying/performing ad units.  These are better performing because most publishers have designed banners for these ad dimensions.

For your page, I would suggest the top section where you're using the 336x280 to only use one or the left side (preferbally a 300x250 ad unit), and maybe a description of the game or the right.  The bottom section you should use a 468x90 advert.

You should also play around with the positioning and coloring of the ad text unit.

How this helps.

Hello,

If your in the real estate business, $299 doesn't seem too steep to pay, so I would say it is worth it.  It's an authority link and highly trusted but I doubt it will improve your rankings because I believe your competitors would also have a link on the directory.  From personal experience I find that having alternative high quality links your competitors don't have, works better than having the same link.

Hello,

My advice is try to keep things simple and straightforward.  You shouldn't create an individual page for similar products.  I understand you are trying to optimize a product for a specific keyword, but if the products are very similar such as 'logo design' and 'graphic design' then having one page would be better. If you have too many pages, it might make things confusing for your visitors, thus they will leave the site (higher bounce rate).  Also, the content on each page is fairly similar, so there might be a duplicate issue problem.

If your looking at a PPC perspective, creating the suggested landing pages would be a good idea because you can specifically customize advertisements for each page and that should improve your quality score and minimize CPC.

So in summary, keep things simile and relevant.  Don't create the page just for the SERPS, concentrate on usability (what make it easy for your visitors to navigate around the site), because if they get what they want easily, there is a high chance of them returning.

Hope this helps.

I'm happy with the seomoz rank checker tool.  I think it sends out a weekly report which is good enough for me.  Checking it everyday makes no difference so i rather spend time developing/planning for better content.

Hello Dave,

It's because both the 'www.ebow.ie' and 'ebow.ie' are indexed.  You need to choose either www or non-www version.  For example, if you have an htacess file you would do something like:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.ebow.ie/$1 [R=301,L]

Hello Vincent,

Since your only wanting to remove a link of 4 different websites, it should not be hard.  You should just contact them and ask they them to remove it.

In an unlikely scenario, if they do not remove the links, there is nothing really you can do about it.  The only way would be to gain more high quality links which will build your authority and reputation.  Once you've gained some authoritative links, these will outweigh the 4 'bad quality' links and Google's algorithm will likely place less weight on the bad links.

Hello Dave,

It's because both the 'www.ebow.ie' and 'ebow.ie' are indexed.  You need to choose either www or non-www version.  For example, if you have an htacess file you would do something like:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.ebow.ie/$1 [R=301,L]

Hello,

Do you mean

1. This Is The Title

or

2. THIS IS THE TITLE

Firstly, I don't believe Google would penalisise the site, if you decide to use 'THIS IS THE TITLE' but capitalising everything is hard to read, somewhat unprofessional and possibly SPAMMY.  A good article to read would be: http://uxmovement.com/content/all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read/.  Although there is no direct effect, having capitals could decrease the CTR, so if you were ranked in position 3, and your CTR (lower) or bounce rate (higher) than normal, it could be signal your websites content is not up to scratch, thus your rankings could be effected in that regard.

As such I would not recommend your client in using CAPS for the whole meta title as it will penalise the site more than actually helping it.

Hello,

If your in the real estate business, $299 doesn't seem too steep to pay, so I would say it is worth it.  It's an authority link and highly trusted but I doubt it will improve your rankings because I believe your competitors would also have a link on the directory.  From personal experience I find that having alternative high quality links your competitors don't have, works better than having the same link.

Hello,

There are a few questions I would like to ask to get a better idea of your situation.

1. Do you only run an e-shop? So you only sell your products online, no physical store?

2. Do you actually sell the products or your doing affiliate marketing?

In most cases, I wouldn't actually put it on my e-commerce site because having advertisements on your store seems unprofessional.   The only place I would actually put ads would be in the blog section.

Hello,

I would like to ask what is your CTR like?  Since your website is targets the younger audience, it is unlikely you would receive a high CPC, say above 60-70 cents per click.

What I would suggest is to only use 2 adsense units a page.  This should increase the CPC, because less ads are been displayed(as usually the higher paying CPC's or higher quality ads)

I would suggest using only 300x250, 120/160x 600, 468x68 or 728x90 because these tend to be the best paying/performing ad units.  These are better performing because most publishers have designed banners for these ad dimensions.

For your page, I would suggest the top section where you're using the 336x280 to only use one or the left side (preferbally a 300x250 ad unit), and maybe a description of the game or the right.  The bottom section you should use a 468x90 advert.

You should also play around with the positioning and coloring of the ad text unit.

How this helps.

Hello Cristian,

I would say SEOmoz's Rank Checker tool is very accurate but it also depends on your usual ranking position.  If you tend to rank in the 20-30 range, I would say SEOmoz as Google rankings can sometimes bounce around.

Moosa pointed out some very good points.  I would like to add that with the recent Penguin update by Google, broadening your anchor text usage is critical.  A good way to start would be doing some competitive research analyzing the top 10 competitors and looking into their anchor text distribution %

Hello,

A good tool which I think could help you better understand the types of keywords your competitors rank for is www.semrush.com.   It's a paid service(from $69.95) but there is a free version which provides you a little insight.

What's good about this tool is it provides the organic keyword rankings for your competitors so it helps you improve your keyword research etc...

There is also 'keyword spy' feature if your competitors are advertising through adwords.

Although, I wouldn't put my house on it being 100% accurate, I would say it should be around 70-80% which is pretty cheap considering it's only $69.95 month.

Hope this helps

Hello,

My advice is try to keep things simple and straightforward.  You shouldn't create an individual page for similar products.  I understand you are trying to optimize a product for a specific keyword, but if the products are very similar such as 'logo design' and 'graphic design' then having one page would be better. If you have too many pages, it might make things confusing for your visitors, thus they will leave the site (higher bounce rate).  Also, the content on each page is fairly similar, so there might be a duplicate issue problem.

If your looking at a PPC perspective, creating the suggested landing pages would be a good idea because you can specifically customize advertisements for each page and that should improve your quality score and minimize CPC.

So in summary, keep things simile and relevant.  Don't create the page just for the SERPS, concentrate on usability (what make it easy for your visitors to navigate around the site), because if they get what they want easily, there is a high chance of them returning.

Hope this helps.

Hello,

If you are willing to provide more details rather than just the idea, you can get a good quality one for around $300.  The graphics are important but the information flow is just as important.  I think to get a good infographic done, the planning and research could take longer than the actual design. So if you are under a tight budget, providing detailed information on how you want to infographic to flow would allow you to cut cost significantly.